Sunday, December 23, 2012

Tis the season to be jolly… For me personally, Christmas is one of the most wonderful times of the year. While I am not a big fan of cold weather and snow, I do love NHL and college hockey and ice fishing.

I have many things that I am thankful for… I am lucky to blog about of the best hockey teams in the nation with best fans in the world. I would like to thank the fans.

I would also like to thank my editor Andrew Eide for giving me an opportunity to write for the Hockey Writers Combine.

Big thanks to UND's Women's Hockey SID Derek Koenen, Matt Schill and @UNDSID Jayson Hajdu for all of their help in the pressbox and after games getting us the players and coaches to interview.

Now I am going to hand out some lumps of coal.

To the University of Minnesota Head coach Don Lucia for not scheduling the University of North Dakota for at least the next four years.

A big lump of coal to the NHL and NHLPA – Unfortunately, we have no NHL Hockey because of this moronic lockout and I would like to extend a lump of coal to the NHLPA and the NHL owners. I find both equally culpable. There is also no reason they shouldn’t have a deal by now. Get your butts to the conference room and get a deal hammered out. Enough is enough. Let’s get this thing figured out before we lose the second full season in less than eight years.

A lump of coal to the NCAA Ice Hockey Committee for not letting the players play with the half shields – if they’re good enough for the junior hockey players to wear – they should be good enough for the NCAA Division I hockey players to wear as well.

A lump of coal for the on ice officials in Division I college hockey – so far this season – I have seen some of the worst on ice officiating that I have seen for a very long time. I know it’s easy to sit in the stand or watch a game on TV and pick apart the officiating but it is what it is. Almost nightly, the officials are blowing the checking from behind penalty, this needs to be called consistently, yet it’s not. The level of college hockey has never been better – unfortunately, the officiating is at an all-time worst. I will be handing out lumps of coal to the NCHC if they hire any of the current WCHA officials.

A lump of coal to Brandon Veal of the Mining Gazette and his hit piece that he wrote about UND Hockey and the NCHC. Here is what UND head coach Dave Hakstol had to say about Veal’s moronic and bufoonish article. “I think honestly the guys read some of the press clippings around here and I don’t think they were real happy with an article that was in the paper here on Friday,” Hakstol said. "There was also all these tweets and twitter and all this, that were predicting that we were going to have packed it in because of a long first half, finished for finals and a big three week break coming. I think If we needed anything extra we certainly had it there.”

A lump of coal to the NHL owners for signing a bunch of player’s right before the lockout and then not wanting to pay the players the full amount of the legal contracts that they agreed to pay the players. The owner of the Minnesota Wild, Craig Leipold should be ashamed of himself.

A huge lump of coal to the commissioner of the NHL Gary Bettman – just because – this is the third lockout since he has been the commissioner of the NHL and he will always go down in history as being the Lockout Commish.